


Romance Done Quick

by Benfrosh



Category: Original Work
Genre: 'found video', (someone says fuck a few times), F/F, minor language use, what if two streamers had crushes on each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 16:25:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7691467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benfrosh/pseuds/Benfrosh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So I was watching some of the SGDQ VODs - you know SGDQ, right? Summer Games Done Quick, the video game speedrun charity event? People play games super quickly and people pledge to charity for more speedruns. Well, there was one game that they did at like 2 AM on Friday, Metal Storm, that I thought was super cool, so I was looking up more about the runner who did that. And when I was researching her, I found this really cute story in some of her VODs. Unfortunately they all got deleted in some Twitch database goof, and every time I try to post my copies to Youtube they get taken down by a copyright bot, so I wrote them up as best as I could. Trust me, it's really cute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Romance Done Quick

More Metal Storm practice, plus a special announcement! 32:18  
CyborgHero May 26th, 2016

\---

A pink screensaver plays. Little cartoon flowers spin across the background, rolling off the left side of the screen to appear once again on the right, while a set of bouncing words in the corner proclaims "Stream starting shortly!" A soft rendition of the Super Mario World theme plays in the background.

Before long, the screen fades out, fading in to CyborgHero herself, with a window in the lower right corner open for the chat stream and a window in the upper right paused on the Metal Storm title screen, with a small frill decoration on the bottom. Her short black hair hides under a red and white baseball cap, and she wears a black t-shirt with the Games Done Quick logo on it. Her blank expression quickly breaks out in a smile as she waves at the camera. "Selamat sore, everyone!" she says with a grin. "How's everyone doing tonight?" She smiles as she looks at her computer screen, presumably at the chat. It's a bit hard to follow with the hundred odd people commenting, but the audience seems enthusiastic to say the least. 

"Glad to see you're all doing well. Guess we'll get right on with things then! I promised you guys a special announcement, but knowing you guys you probably already guessed." The chat quickly switches to spamming "SGDQ" over and over, and CyborgHero's smile grows wider as she watches the chat's enthusiasm. "That's right!" She grabs her shirt to hold out the GDQ logo. "My run got accepted for SGDQ, I'm going! I'm sooo excited guys," she says, clasping her hands together, bouncing up and down in her chair with glee, "and I really have to thank you all for all of your support. If it weren't for all you guys's enthusiasm I never would have been so motivated to keep trying and going for it, and now..." CyborgHero buries her face in her hands. "Just, thank you all so much. Really."

Finally, she composes herself, and takes a deep breath. "Okay, phew. Let's do some more practice, okay? Gotta be in top shape for SGDQ!" she says with a small squee. "We're going to take a few practice runs to make sure I know what I have to practice this month - oh!" She grabs her mouse, and a few clicks later, a countdown appears in the lower left corner of the screen - 42:20:15:06. "That's the countdown to my flight! And that's all the time I have to work out my jitters to make sure the run goes great." She taps some more keys on her keyboard and switches places with the game screen. "Let's do this!" The chirpy 8 bit theme of the game starts up, and the title switches to a display: 

STAGE 1-1

The stage fades in to a red robot in a green corridor, who promptly starts running to the right, firing his gun and jump across pits and over attacks. "So we probably have some new people who just joined us," CyborgHero says with a happy expression on her face. "I'm CyborgHero, I've been running Metal Storm for..." She pauses as the mech jumps in the air, flips around, and sticks to the ceiling. "I think about eight months now? After last SGDQ I was looking for games no one really did speedruns for, and I found this cool NES game. As far as I can tell I'm the one who even started the community, there's like," a noncommittal shrug, "6 of us who run it now? We do weekly races, it's fun, I haven't lost in months so I won the right to submit the run by trial by combat." She laughs. The robot reaches the edge of the screen.

STAGE 1-2

"I live on the west coast of the US, if you guys are wondering about timezones, but no way in hell am I giving you the state. Girl's gotta have some privacy." The look on her face suggests this is no joke. "This is actually going to be my first time flying anywhere, so I'm a little nervous? Let alone the east coast. But, y'know, how bad could it be, right?" The robot bounces merrily across the screen, shooting down little enemies on the way.

RED ALERT

A large computer comes down on the screen, with three obvious places for a weak spot. "Okay, let's make this a quick boss..." Shoot, shoot, shoot, jump, shoot, shoot, shoot, jump, jump, shoot, shoot, shoot, explosion. "Yeah! That's gotta be PB pace - aw shit, I forgot my timers," she says with a groan as she looks to the side, at a second monitor off the camera. "I knew I missed something. Ah well, practice run, I can time it once we're done."

STAGE 2-1

"It's kinda weird, y'know?" Her eyes seem to look past the screen she was staring at, but her hands continue apace on the controller as the robot marched onwards. "I'm going to be going somewhere where I don't know anyone at all. And like, sure, I'll have a hotel room, and there's lots of cool people I admired, but no one I've really talked to before, y'know?" 

STAGE 2-2

A donation comes in - $15 from sdfdkweqjker, "good luck at sgdq!!!" - displaying on the pink border at the bottom of the screen.

RED ALERT

A small sigh, her head now obviously somewhere else. "I mean, it's not the first time, I did fine in college making friends and what not, and I thought that was going to be end of the world, but..." Trailing off, she focuses on the screen once more. The game continues in its merry way, as Hero silently focuses solely on the screen in front of her.

She quickly demolishes another boss. The chat is quickly devolving into memes and "wooo! pb pace!!" A few small donations come in.

STAGE 3-1

"Man, I haven't met anyone new in ages, though," Hero whispers, as if she wasn't quite meaning to say it.

STAGE 3-2

RED ALERT

STAGE 4-1

"Okay guys, here we go!" Hero's face visibly perks up at the notification. "First major skip of the run, let's go for it." The robot stood in the middle of a box, blowing up enemies normally, until some green orbs finally floated in from the right side of the screen with a power up. She dodges one, two, before jumping up to pick up a powerup as a third tries to slam into her - and she explodes. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon... DAMN!" she shouts as it displays STAGE 4-1, 1 life remaining. "Okay, so that's literally a frame perfect trick, and I get it like... 50% of the time, I'd say? We're doing it safe now." And she begins playing normally once more, dodging attacks and fighting enemies. "If you die on the exact same frame you get a powerup, you skip ahead to the next checkpoint, and this is by far the best section to do it since this one is strictly time and there's no fast movement. But damn!" she curses, shaking her head, "I wish I could get that more reliably."

A red chat message scrolls into view on the chat window: 

mechenjin: @CyborgHero there's this runner i found you don't race with who's good at the skip - check her out, PinkBlitz

Hero glances at the window with her chat up, an audible ping reaching the microphone. "PinkBlitz? Weird, never heard of them. Wonder why they never asked to join the races. I'll check their videos out after I'm done here, thanks."

The video continues uneventfully for the remainder of the run. As soon as she finishes, she starts another run, this time with the timers enabled, clocking a solid eleven minutes thirty-six seconds, 3 seconds slower than her PB. After completing the final run, Hero lets out a yawn. "Gonna call that a night, I think. Some good runs today! I'm feeling pretty good for starting this month right. See you guys tomorrow!" And with a brief wave, she leans over to press a button on her keyboard, and the stream fades out to the screensaver before cutting off.

\---

stream 20:07  
PinkBlitz May 27th, 2016

PinkBlitz, wearing a headset for recording, stares into her computer screen. The light from the screen illuminates her pale skin and pink hair in an otherwise dark room. The stream is split into four equal corners, with her camera in the upper left, a No Signal display in the upper right, a set of splits in the lower right, and an empty chat window in the lower left - a minimal, but functional stream display. 

"Hey, stream's going I guess." Her deep voice showed no hints of exhaustion, despite the late hour evidenced by the total darkness. "Gonna wait for a bit for someone to show up before I get going."

Silence. Blitz clicks at her computer, occasionally giggling at some unseen content. Before long, however, a chat message shows up:

mechenjin: am i late?

"Hey, Shion!" Blitz smiles cheerfully in recognition. "Nah, you're good. I haven't checked, do we have anyone watching and not chatting?"

Pause, waiting for the stream delay to catch up.

mechenjin: looks like a couple people being too shy

"Good enough for me," Blitz continues with a chuckle. "Let's get going."

She leans over to an offscreen console and with a switch clacking on, the No Signal screen switches over to the Metal Storm title screen.

The game proceeds apace. Evidently she isn't as good at the game as CyborgHero - her reactions are a tad slower, she takes a few leaps more cautiously than her, concentrating intensely. But in the end - screen after screen falls, boss after boss dies, and she clearly knows what she's doing. 

In fact, it's only about four minutes and twenty seconds, not too much longer than Hero's run, to reach the part where Hero died. And she carefully lines up as Hero did, and jumps, and dies and -

Warps straight to the midboss. "Easy peasy first try every time," Blitz says, speaking for the first time in the run. She focuses once more on the game, not noticing the chat message that comes in right after:

CyborgHero: holy crap!!! that was perfect how'd you do it

As such, she keeps playing the game. And with the successful death, she wraps it up in eleven minutes, fifty seconds. "There we go," she says, a cocky grin growing on her face. "Not too shabby, if I say so myself. Glad I finally got that death skip down. This is what, five seconds off PB?" She moved to type something on her computer, presumably taking note of the time. "What'd you guys- holy crap," she interrupts herself, covering her mouth in shock. "Oh man, CyborgHero, what are - what are you doing here, jeez, I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner! Let me just write this time down." She types a note, shock still evident on her face, her cheeks slightly blushing.

CyborgHero: haha, no worries! nice run! why don't you join us on the races?

"Thanks, gosh. I mean, you were the one who got me into this," she waved her hands at the setup in front of her, "everything, seriously. How'd you even find me?" A pause for the response. "Oh, yeah, I just... kinda shy, I guess. About the races." Pause.

CyborgHero: @mechenjin mentioned you - she said you were really good at the death skip in 4-1 and i wanted to check your stream out!

"God, of course she would. I didn't talk about that during the run, did I? Give me a few minutes, I can tell you how I did it."

She restarts the game, and quickly plays through the first few stages. 

CyborgHero: thanks! always cool to see new people run the game, glad to hear i inspired you :)

Before long, she returned once more getting to the autoscroller. "Okay, pay attention, this'll be quick." And a pause... "Jump... on this note." And a jump, pick up, death, skip. "You hear that? The duhduhduh, duhduhduh, duhduhduh, JUMP, duh? That's how I time it." And she pauses the game, and turns once more to the computer.

CyborgHero: hahaha oh wow I turned the music off months ago - I couldn't stand the repetition anymore

Blitz laughes in response. "I hadn't considered that at all, wow." She giggles a git more, before continuing. "Yeah, the music cue is thankfully exactly what you need to time it, and you can line up the foot with the pixel you need to jump from, but that's a bit more forgiving." She smiles, evidently proud at teaching her hero something.

CyborgHero: wanna add me on skype? i feel like there's a few more tips & tricks we could share, and you should seriously join our races

"Is that oka- of course it's okay, you're asking." She rests her chin in her hand, happy and relaxed. "Sure, definitely. You can, uh, message me, I guess. So, uh, talk to you soon, I guess? Dang, wow."

CyborgHero: yeah! i'll ping you after the stream

"Well, no reason to stick around. See you guys." And Blitz leans over, and presses a button - the stream cuts out. 

\---

I'm skipping over a few irrelevant streams here. The next good one is a couple of weeks later.

\---

Metal Storm, with special guest PinkBlitz! 40:08  
CyborgHero June 10th, 2016

The same pink screensaver from the start of all of CyborgHero's streams - this time playing a chiptune cover of Animal Crossing's Downtown By Night, according to the note on the bottom of the screen. 

Finally, the screen fades in to CyborgHero's normal stream layout. This time, however, the camera display is split in two vertically, CyborgHero on the left and PinkBlitz smiling nervously on the right. "Hey everyone! Selamat sore!" Hero says cheerfully with a happy wave and a big grin.

PinkBlitz waves shyly, nervously adding "Hey... everyone."

The chat quickly breaks out in comments of "new person!" "damn she cute" and "introduce yourself!"

Hero laughs a little in response. "So as you can see, we have a special guest star today. Everyone say hello to PinkBlitz!"

"Hey, I guess. That's me. Yeah." Blitz scratches her head in uncertainty, but keeps a brave face on.

"If you guys remember from a few weeks back, someone recommended I talk with Blitz about how to do the stage 4 death warp better. So I did, and, well," Hero grinned and shrugged, "here we are now! She doesn't have much exposure on the scene, so I wanted to bring her onto the stream for a bit to introduce herself and for you all to get to know her better."

"hi!" "hello!" "do you stream"

"So, yeah, I'm PinkBlitz," Blitz says as she plays with her hair, "I stream this game too sometimes, you can find me at, well, that name."

"Let's get the game started, and we'll do the rest of the Q&A, okay?" Hero picks up her controller, presses a few buttons on the keyboard, and the stream switches over to game mode. The robot starts moving and -

\---

Okay, look. I'm writing these up for your benefit, right? If you're that curious about the gameplay, go look it up on Youtube. The story's about these two, if you haven't picked it up yet. So I'm gonna focus on them.

\---

"So, first question, who are you, what do you do for a living?" Despite continuing to play the game skillfully, Hero clearly has the majority of it down to muscle memory, and plays even as she's talking to Blitz.

Blitz covers her face with a blush. "C'mon, you know that already. Can't you tell them for me?"

"Hey, you're the one who agreed to be on the show, you knew the risks," Hero replies, laughing. 

"Okay, fine." Blitz puts her hands down and takes a deep breath. "I'm PinkBlitz, I'm a freelance artist, I do a lot of work for small indie games."

"Can you tell us any games you've worked on?"

"Nothing you've heard of probably, just a bunch of five dollar Steam games. I'm hoping that with my portfolio building up I can start getting some bigger-name work."

"Aw, there's that one you told me about. That was pretty good, even!" Hero added with a toothy grin. 

Blitz sighed. "Okay, there's zero chance any of you have heard of it, but PointDreams, it's on Steam Greenlight and coming out next month, I did the concept art for that. Probably the most successful of the projects so far."

"You should be more proud! I really liked the art for it, the people were really cool and well designed."

Blitz looks away from the screen, whispering, "You keep saying that, but..." Trailing off, she eventually faces the screen again. "Thanks, though. Really. It..." she says, trailing off again, before smiling and saying "It really means a lot to hear that."

Hero smiles at the camera, and the two don't say anything for a moment. Finally, Hero coughs, continuing "Uh, yeah, so what made you get into speedrunning? Is this your first game, or...?"

Blitz stirs herself from her reverie. "Uh, yeah, this is my first game. A friend of mine actually linked me to your stream once, and I thought you were- it was pretty cool, so I decided to give it a shot. I hadn't really done any speedrunning before, but it seemed like a fun thing to practice."

"Do you play many other games?"

Blitz shakes her head. "Most of the time I prefer to focus on my art. Even when I don't have a project I find sketching really relaxing, y'know? But it's nice to have another hobby that isn't super tied into my work when I'm getting really burned out."

"I can definitely imagine," Hero replied with a nod. "So what do you do when you're practicing art, then? Do you sketch up ideas inside, go draw nature, or what?"

"I like people watching, actually. Sometimes I go out on the bus and just ride around for a few hours, sketching people that get on and off." Blitz smiles as well, clearly reflecting back on happy memories.

Hero giggles. "Man, you really are cute," she says under her breath.

Blitz blinks, startled. "Did you say something, Ma- Hero?"

Hero jumps slightly. "Nope, uh, nothing. So, any questions from the audience?"

The chat quickly pops up with "can i have $5" "are you seeing anyone" "what's your favorite pizza".

"No, no, and pepperoni." Blitz quickly retorts.

"What were the questions? I missed them," Hero asks, trying to split her attention between the chat and the game screen.

"If I could lend money, if I was seeing anyone, and my favorite pizza."

"Oh! Huh." Hero looks lost in thought, but continues playing the game.

The impromptu Q&A continues as Hero finishes a few more runs of the game. Afterwards, Hero lets out a big yawn. "Jeez, how late is it over there, Blitz?"

Blitz waves it off. "It's only, like, 1 AM. I'm fine, I normally start later than this."

"I'm getting pretty tired, anyways, so I'm gonna call it a night. Thanks for agreeing to come on the show!"

"Thank you, it was... fun. It was really fun, yeah."

Hero turns to face the camera. "And thank all of you for watching, and good night!" 

The stream fades to the screensaver, before cutting out.

\---

Before you ask, I checked with PinkBlitz before I wrote up this next one.

don't watch past 12 minutes 25:38  
PinkBlitz June 26th, 2016

\---

PinkBlitz's streaming setup snaps into view. Her eyes are sunken and dark, and she looks wiped. She rubs her face in exhaustion. Finally, taking a deep breath in, she releases it and looks at her screen once more. "Anyone here?" she asks the empty chat. "No, of course not, it's like... 4 AM? Even Maya's asleep by now." She pulls out a controller from a tangle of wires on her desk. "Let's play some Metal Storm. Maybe I can sleep after that," she adds with an unenthusiastic laugh.

The game starts up, and she starts playing silently. Last time she only talked to make quips during loading screens, but all that is gone. The only sound now is the clack when she hits a button on her keyboard for the time splits. She plays, and plays, and plays, and...

Final time: eleven minutes, thirty eight seconds. Twelve seconds faster than her previous PB. Blitz stares at the screen in shock. "I'll be damned. PB, huh." She puts her controller down and stares at the screen. "Was that... damn, that was just better on every stage, wasn't it." According to the onscreen timer, it definitely is. "Huh," she mutters. 

Finally, she pulls her eyes away from her screen and runs them through her hair, before breaking out into a nervous laugh. "I just," she says, interrupted by laughter, "I was gonna, play this til I finally stopped thinking about it and went to sleep, and... fuck, what are the odds!" She lets go of her hair and takes a deep breath. "What do I even do now."

And like that, she sits in silence for a while, barely moving, not making a sound. "I really don't know what to do, like... what do I say to her? How do you..." she says, trailing off, staring at the ceiling. "God, I must sound crazy right now."

Another deep breath. "Here, let me show you the chat log, maybe you'll understand." It's really not clear who she's talking to, the chat's empty. She clicks and drags something on her computer, and a Skype window comes into view, covering the time split display. It's a Skype conversation with CyborgHero:

Yesterday:

CyborgHero:  
good night! i gotta get some sleep  
<3 looking forward to chatting with you more tomorrow  
claire.malone:  
see ya!!!  
you too :)

Today:  
CyborgHero:  
hey! i was wondering - i've been having a lot of fun talking with you on skype, you've been super fun and interesting and cool to hang out with online. i was thinking, since i'm going to be in town near you for SGDQ, would you like to go on a date with me when i'm in town? it doesn't have to be anything serious, i just couldn't live with myself if i didn't ask :) 

"You see that? You see what I've been dealing with all day?" Blitz near-shouts. "God, if she just..." Blitz cuts herself off, burying her face in her hands. "'Doesn't have to be serious', god. I'm crushing on her so damn hard and she's all 'it doesn't have to be anything serious.'" She stares at the screen once more.

"It's just... that's the problem, y'know? I've got such a crush on her that it is going to be serious." Blitz takes a tuft of hair, now wild from her running her hands through it, and starts idly playing with it. "And with one serious date, what's going to happen next? She's only around for the week, and then... what? A long distance relationship? Is one of us going to move if we want to keep it going? Just pack everything up? And when would that happen? How could we ever know when to commit and just bet it all? I've seen so many 'soulmates' just completely fuck it all up once they actually live together, and if something like that happens after one of us moves..."

Blitz sits in silence, playing with her hair.

The chat pings:

CyborgHero: @PinkBlitz you there?

Blitz glances over to her monitor and freezes, her face rapidly blushing. "H-hey. May- Hero. Hey." She gulps. "Um, how much of that did you hear?"

CyborgHero: all of it, i came in at the end of the run

"Fuck," Blitz swears with a nervous laugh. "I'm sorry, I totally thought you were asleep."

The Skype window pings.

CyborgHero:  
it's okay, i'm sorry if I intruded on something private

Blitz starts typing.

claire.malone:  
no, it's okay, i'm sorry if i'm talking too much about personal shit  
CyborgHero:  
you're good :) your choice about what to share  
not like anyone's online :P lol  
claire.malone:  
so you probably heard me talk about things  
CyborgHero:  
yeah i did  
mind if i talk about the way i see it?

Blitz pauses for a moment.

claire.malone:  
sure

Hero types for a while.

CyborgHero:  
the way i see it, what's going to happen is going to happen, no matter what. if the date sucks, then that's that and we can just move forward. if we're happy with it, and we enjoy each other a lot, maybe that can just be the end of that, and we're just happy with a great positive experience. and maybe we want to try a long distance relationship? i've been enjoying talking with you, and you with me i presume, and maybe we can just do that but more lovey dovey <3 and then we can worry about future things like what we want to do

Blitz reads the long block of text.

CyborgHero:  
and you do like me, right?

Blitz sighs.

claire.malone:  
yeah  
a lot  
you're really fucking cute both on stream and off  
and i just wanna kiss you a bunch and hang out with you and hug you and  
yeah

CyborgHero:  
so how about we just try it? see how it goes :) okay? <3

Blitz nods.

claire.malone:  
okay  
if that's okay with you i'd really like to

CyborgHero:  
i'm the one who asked, silly

Blitz laughs.

claire.malone:  
thanks, i really needed to talk  
i am drop dead exhausted so i'm gonna go sleep now  
<3 can't wait to see you in person

CyborgHero:  
me too <3 goodnight and sleep well

Blitz smiles, then pauses. "Shit, I didn't turn off the stream," she exclaims as she scrambles and reaches for her keyboard-

And the stream cuts out.

\---

SGDQ 2016 benefitting Doctors Without Borders - Crypt of the NecroDancer 30:03:24  
GamesDoneQuick July 8th, 2016

This was the run that made me want to write this up. We're cutting here to 2 hours, 21 minutes, 22 seconds in.  
\---

The SGDQ stream layout shows the Metal Storm title screen, and in the side, CyborgHero is sitting in the runner's chair, with PinkBlitz sitting on the sofa behind her. Hero is looking off to the side at an unseen tech, nodding her head. "We ready? Okay, I'll count down," Hero says to the unseen tech. She turns to face the screen in front of her, Blitz clasping her hands together in nervousness. "Okay," Hero says. "Five, four, three, two, one, go." A small cheer comes from the nearly empty hall - it's the 2 AM crowd, it's pretty tiny.

PinkBlitz takes the microphone sitting next to her on the couch. "Hey, I'm PinkBlitz and this here is my girlfriend, CyborgHero." A few isolated cheers from the audience, and PinkBlitz laughs nervously. "It's a short run, so I'm going to handle talking for her while she concentrates. For this first part..."

Aw, heck, you can go watch this one yourself. I don't think it got deleted. But yeah! That's how Shion accidentally caused these two streamers to become a couple. Isn't that adorable?!


End file.
